How do you succeed at Social Media Marketing? That’s what you really want to know isn’t it? That’s why you’re here.

You want to know what it is that makes some people successful at marketing on Social Media while others are just scrolling through their Facebook newsfeed wondering why they’re wasting their time.

You can spend a lot of time talking about tactics and platforms and the idea of taking the conversation to where your clients are, but you’ve always got to come back to the idea that the first thing you have to do is ask yourself:

"What do I want to get out of Social Media?"

Let’s face it; your clients may not be using Social Media. It depends on who your Ideal Customers or Clients are.

How much time are Doctors and Attorneys and School Superintendents spending on Social Media? They may be “too old!”

Or, as Google reaches deeper and deeper into our lives, they may unwittingly be using Social Media as a research tool to find you … or your competition.

Maybe you shouldn’t be using Social Media.

Maybe you have absolutely nothing to gain from using Social Media.

Maybe you need to admit that Social Media is not the right fit for you the same way you sometimes have to decide that markets are not the right fit for your product.

If you’re still drinking the Kool-Aid you have to ask the question: “What do I want to get from Social Media?”

Do you want to be seen as an expert or authority?

Do you want to find a new job?

Do you want to find new clients?

Do you want to find better employees?

Do you want to advance our profession?

What does your boss want from Social Media? ROI?

What is ROI? What does that mean? How do you measure it? Does it necessarily mean that you can attribute certain income directly to your Social Media efforts?

Maybe; maybe not.

I know for a fact that the Social Media Strategy that I designed for a small, start-up firm in Indianapolis was directly attributable to 8 architectural projects totaling over $4 million in construction … in just over 3 years.

That’s pretty decent and measurable ROI, but did I do it right? Did I align their Social Media Marketing with their business objectives?

Maybe they could have gotten more out of it. Maybe they’d be more successful in the long run if I had focused their efforts differently.

If you don’t know who your audience is where are you going to find them?

If you don’t align your strategy with your overarching business objectives what are you going to talk about?

You can waste a lot of time and effort on Facebook or your blog or whatever if you don’t consider those two things.

If you don’t align your Social Media strategy with your objectives and identify and locate your target market; if you don’t know what you want to get out of Social Media you’re flail around blindly and eventually become overwhelmed.

You may ask yourself “Is Social Media worth it?”

Seth Godin was asked if Social Media was “worth it” for businesses. I really enjoyed his answer:

“If you’ve got Facebook, you’re probably my Friend because God knows I have enough of them and it’s worthless to you. It’s worthless to have lots and lots of friends on Facebook because they’re not really your friends. It’s just people that didn’t want to offend you by pressing the ignore button.

And if you’ve got 5,000 people following you on Twitter because you tell a dirty joke every couple of hours that’s not particularly useful for your business either.

The internet is this giant cocktail party with all these people swarming around connecting as much as they can because they’re keeping score. Who likes me today, who’s talking about me today. But one day when you need to ask them to authorize a $100,000 contract it doesn’t matter.

What matters is where are the real relationships.

Now I have real relationships with thousands of people around the world. There are people I’ve never met who I could email in New Zealand that would let me sleep in their living room for 3 days if I was in town. Because we’ve done stuff for each other. Because we’ve exchanged worthwhile ideas. Because people have been connected by real things not just a couple of bits lining up.

Networking is always important when it’s real and it’s always a useless distraction when it’s fake. The internet has allowed an enormous amount of fake networking to take place. It’s so easy to be seduced by it because there’s a dashboard; a scoreboard that says look how popular I am … and it’s nonsense. If you’re measuring that, it’s like measuring hits to your website; it doesn’t translate.

What translates is there are people out there who I would go out of my way for and who would go out of their way for me. That’s what you need to keep track of and the way to get there is to go out of your way for them and by earning the privilege of one day having that connection.”

You can watch the video of Seth’s answer below: So how do you succeed at Social Media? I think the answer is easier than many people think. It’s definitely overlooked more often than not.

Ask: “What do I want to get out of Social Media?”

Align your Social Media Strategy with your Business Objectives.

Know who and where your Target Market is.

Sure, there are lots of tips and tactics and best practices that have to be followed along the way but if you start with those 3 things you’ll be well on your way to success in Social Media.

How do you succeed at Social Media? The first thing you have to do is ask yourself: "What do I want...

Question(s): What do you want to get out of Social Media? Do you have a Social Media Strategy?